Idle talk

The parliamentary commissioner for standards does not propose penalties (A mess – and only Ukip, the anti-politics party, will benefit, 9 April), she sets out her investigation and her findings. Her role is to be an investigator, not a judge. Your article also suggests that "the MPs may have taken a dispassionate look at the evidence but they lost sight of the politics". The committee's job is to take a dispassionate view of the evidence. We leave the politics to others.Kevin Barron MPChair of the committee on standards

• If the Office for National Statistics introduces new measures of economic performance next year (Editorial, 9 April), shouldn't it issue revised statistics on the same basis for the previous five years to enable a fair comparison to be made, rather than allow George Osborne to claim "a strikingly better record than many have expected"?Jeremy BeechamLabour, House of Lords

• Your pedantic correspondent (Letters, 10 April) might be able to tell his arpeggios from his descending scales, but can he count? The "predominant piano theme" in Abba's only memorable song surely contains only four notes not five.Mike HineKingston on Thames, Surrey

• You have to go to Yorkshire to indulge yourself at the Idle Working Men's Club (Letters, passim).Andrew BaileyWrexham

• In response to Margaret Squires' plea for an end to this long-running correspondence about curious place names (Letters, 8 April), I'm sure many Guardian readers live in Hope (Derbyshire).Ian WestTelford, Shropshire